Whenever, Wherever
by Bite The Dust
Summary: Shadow White's experiences in life, up until the end of the Monaco Cup.


**Oh no I wrote something again**

**How did this get here I am not good with computer**

**I don't own nothin'**

**For Mystic Authoress; I don't know why you'd want this because this guy is creepy**

* * *

My name is Shadow White.

For a middle-class kid that grew up in the suburbs my life has sucked pretty damn hard, starting with my stupid-ass name.

I've always resented my parents for naming me this. That alone would have secured me a lifetime of bullying and ridicule, if it weren't for, you know, all the other things about me worth bullying and ridiculing me for. Or maybe the name was the start of it, I don't know, but either way I hate my parents.

Oh don't worry, the name wasn't the last of it, so my spite isn't completely nonsensical.

My father was one of those dads that still lived in the 19th century, the "as long as I'm making all the money, I don't have to be active at all in the raising of my child, let my wife do all the work" kind of guys. According to my counselor and an anime called _Trapeze_, that's bound to screw up your kid on some level.

My mother, partly because she had no help and partly because she was a horrible fucking bitch, didn't do such a great job either. She made sure I got to school and made me food every once in a while, but other than that she parked me in front of the TV from the age I could sit up on my own and did next to nothing else.

But enough about that, everyone's got a shitty parent or two nowadays, right? Well here's another story everyone's probably already heard- I was bullied as a kid. No, really. With my cool fucking name and absolutely no experience being socially involved with other children, who woulda thought?

Anyway, the name more than likely brought about the first bits of unwanted attention, but then everyone realized that I had absolutely no good qualities. I wasn't handsome, funny, talkative, rich, athletic, or any of the qualities you'd think would get a kid not-picked on.

So I sat every day, only paying attention to the things I wanted to see, like my teachers and the TV, and completely ignoring the things I didn't.

I learned to shut out the world completely.

And they I noticed one day that I could see things that other people didn't.

Slight twitches of muscles, tiny gestures and tics, the different ways different people's throats and mouths moved when they talked. On all kinds of different people, too- actors, athletes, people I knew... It scared me for a while until I realized something.

I could do all those things. Exactly like those people. Even their voices.

I thought it was just another thing that would get me bullied, until I got an idea.

I could imitate athletes perfectly- I could join a sports team, become a jock, and then no more bullying for Shadow!

Everyone knows how _that_ turned out. I dropped out of school afterward.

My years as a recluse weren't exactly the best years of my life, but I didn't have to interact with anyone, even my parents, so it was pretty alright. I did what I did best, watched TV. Lots of old Marcel Marceau VHS that I bought at garage sales and used movie stores and stuff.

Then there was a particularly long period of not interacting with anyone, waking up, watching TV, going back to sleep. Maybe I'd eat every once in a while.

And then it happened.

Don't act like you don't know what it is.

Mom came in that fateful afternoon, what, she's worried about me? After almost six months of not seeing me? What a wonderful mother she was.

And I couldn't stop.

I just couldn't stop.

I had to _roll my eyes back into my head_ to keep from imitating.

That was probably the scariest moment of my life. I got used to it eventually, but for a while right after it started happening it was pretty jarring.

But then I got kicked out of the house. One more thing to add to the "Why My Parents Are Awful" list.

But at that time I was already eighteen, and I had already known what I was going to do with my life. I was going to become a master pantomime, just like my hero Marcel Marceau.

I was going to be number one, and then I'd show everyone. I'd become a household name, and then they'd be sorry.

I hitchhiked from my home on the east coast to Los Angeles, which took about a month.

Astonishingly, it didn't take long to find someone who would manage a pantomime.

That was a pretty sweet gig. I made tons of cash and was pretty popular for a while.

But everyone knows how _that_ turned out.

I was kicked out of my guild and drank a lot of my money away.

And then I met him.

I didn't know what he was doing in America. Did he come specifically to see me? Somebody else? Or did he had a completely different motive? He said he'd already recruited someone else for his cause, some chick, I think.

I had taken a crash course in Japanese before because one of my next shows was going to be there- I had no idea those people loved the circus and all that stuff so much- so we could easily communicate.

And he told me just what I wanted to hear when I was at the lowest point in my life.

_Number One._

_You could be Number One, Shadow._

And that was all he needed to tell me. I was game, and all I needed to do was imitate him. The perfect gig, the _ultimate_ gig. I just needed to beat some other Japanese guys at the very end, before that some other guy would do all the work for me.

This was my chance, I could finally redeem myself. Could finally rub my fame in the faces of everyone that's ever been shitty to me.

Meaning pretty much everybody.

This was going to be so sweet.

* * *

And it was, for a bit.

I met my male teammate first, he was also in California at the time- visiting family, I think. He was very, very obviously gay, assless chaps and everything, and his name was Spencer Henry Hokou.

Were we going to be the stupid name team or what?

He was very talkative. And his voice was annoying. He spoke to me the whole time on the plane to New York- the only city with an airport that went to Monaco- and I'm the kind of person who likes to sleep on airplanes. Only sleep. Nothing else. Maybe eat.

I got so mad that I rolled my eyes back to where they were supposed to be and began imitating everything he said.

That shut him up good.

When we landed in New York we met up with the token girl of our team. No... She wasn't a girl. She was definitely a woman. A really, really good looking woman. Long red hair, big green eyes, and a fantastic body. Her name was Monica Adenauer, yup we were the stupid name team. Although I have to say, Adenauer is a lot less ridiculous than the name she took when she got married. And yeah she was super-hot. When we came up and Spencer said hello, which somehow I managed to imitate pretty much under my breath somehow, she popped the bubblegum she was chewing and gave us this really aloof smile and her eyes crinkled at the corners a little and _damn._

Needless to say I panicked.

I had gotten with a couple women in LA, but I played the part of the strong, silent type so I didn't really have to talk to them either. And God knows I didn't interact with any women before then either. So even if I _could_ talk to her, I, well, couldn't talk to her.

Yup, there was still that dilemma that only I had. Should I roll my eyes back in my head? That's so gross, though. The other girls always told me to just leave them be and imitate them, but that's what they liked me for anyway. I didn't want to imitate her either, though, she'd think it was weird! So I just stood there, dumbfounded, no way out, deer in the headlights, up shit creek, while she and Spencer exchanged pleasantries.

And then she turned to me.

She said "Hey". Just hey, nothing big.

"Hey." I returned, expertly parroting her voice.

And she gave me a look. That look, the one that people give children that are acting up in the grocery store. I'm pretty much used to that look, but from strangers. I had to live with this chick for more than a month, and every time she looked at me she'd give me the look. I panicked further. When I get nervous, I imitate harder than usual, if you can believe it.

"Uh... Okay then." She said.

_"Uh... Okay then." _I said.

"Oh, don't worry about that at all. He just does that." Spencer laughed.

_"Oh, don't worry about that at all. He just does that." _I laughed.

After that neither of us heard her speak for a long time. And when she finally did feel like talking again, it was only to say things I absolutely did not want to hear.

* * *

It was just as Mr. Kirisaki told us it would be. For the first couple of rounds, we didn't have to do anything. It was all Spencer. During that time he taught me and Spencer taught Monica all we needed to know about bread. I didn't know shit, but Monica was already some kind of pastry prodigy and her mother was a baker or something so she was ahead of me the whole time.

Whenever we weren't actually competing- which was actually a lot of fun most of the time, we went to a deserted island and I got to see Monica in a bikini so that was pretty cool- I was working my ass off, getting HUGE for some ungodly reason and imitating Kirisaki nonstop.

That was when I discovered I actually liked cooking. It was fun, and involved a lot more moving around and thinking than I thought it would. I enjoyed it a lot.

The guys we were specially bred (Haha, bread) to take down- the Japanese team- they didn't look so special. A semi-retarded guy with died hair, some dude who looked like he was wearing eyeliner all the time, and a kid that wasn't even legal yet.

We had practically already won.

* * *

When I heard that Monica had kicked the ass of that bandanna-wearing goth eyeliner whatever guy, I was fucking ecstatic. I couldn't remember a time in my life when I was so happy. She had won, and that was _so cool._

She was also really fucking happy.

But for a completely different reason. A completely ridiculous, completely out-of-left-field reason.

She came back to the hotel after visiting the nearby police station- I didn't ask, I didn't want to know- red in the face and grinning like a fool. I thought it was just because she was excited for winning, but oh was I wrong.

She began talking then. To Spencer, of course, but she was talking. I was imitating her the whole time, but she didn't seem to care.

And she was talking a mile a minute, she just would not shut up. And it wasn't about winning, or her match at all, really.

It was that guy. Eyeliner guy. Her opponent. The _enemy. _The guy whose ass she just gave a thorough kicking.

And she was saying _good things. _Great things even. And she just wouldn't shut up about him.

And eventually this began to annoy Spencer, too.

"Woah, woah, girl. Slow down a bit."

"_Woah, woah, girl. Slow down a bit." _Yeah, woman. Slow the fuck down. What's going on.

"Oh, um, sorry." She gave a small, shy smile.

"_Oh, um, sorry." _I tried to give the same smile, but I know it wouldn't look as good on me as it did on her.

"So, what's all this about? Why do you like Suwabara-san so much all of a sudden?" He laughed. She didn't. I imitated.

Her face burst into color. "I-I'd rather not say..." I imitated her.

Wait, what?

Spencer did a double-take and then he blushed, too. "Hey, hey, wait a second, I was kidding! So, you actually...?"

She smiled again. "Yeah... Sorry."

_Wait, WHAT?_

"Nothin' to be sorry for, that's great, I'm happy for you." He smiled back, with his great big, bright white-toothed smile.

She smiled wider, no longer shy. "Speaking of which, I'm not going to be around tomorrow~"

_WHAT!?_

"Damn, girl. Good luck with that. That guy's gotta be dense as hell."

"Oh, he is, he is. Thanks, Spencer. Well then, I've had _quite a day, _and I'm going to go take a nap. Bye-bye~" And she left the room.

Spencer turned to me then, and I rolled my eyes back.

"Well, can you believe that? A bit strange, but how romantic, finding love in a foreign country. That's got to be so awesome."

"I guess..." I grumbled.

My chest and my head hurt. I kind of wanted a nap, too.

* * *

Spencer lost. Spencer LOST. SPENCER lost.

_TO THE SEMI-RETARDED BALD GUY._

I couldn't believe it. I couldn't _fucking believe it._

I hadn't seen Monica at all for the last week, she's been off doing whatever with her new _boyfriend,_ and now _Spencer lost._

God dammit, I've had enough of this. It's my time to shine, I knew _I_ wasn't going to lose. I had the perfect bread, made by the best baker in the world, executed by Number One me. And I was going against that little kid. Everything was stacked in my favor.

* * *

I stood on the roof of our hotel, seriously considering jumping off.

I had lost. _We_ had lost. All of us. Because of me. I underestimated my opponent. I mean, Monica beat that one guy, and there's no way the semi-retarded looking guy got them all the way through the tournament.

I had made a mistake.

Again.

I make nothing but mistakes.

I've never done a good thing in my entire life.

So I should just jump, right? What could I possibly do?

I had stepped up on the ledge that separated the floor of the roof, when someone grabbed me around my waist and dragged me off.

"What the _hell_ do you think you're _doing_!?" I heard Spencer scream, his arms still around my waist, holding me to him, afraid to let go.

"Committing suicide." I replied, calmly. Like the words didn't mean anything. And they really didn't at that point.

"Well, you aren't anymore." But they were just words, he wasn't moving. Not trying to take me away or anything, just telling me.

"Says you. I'm jumping. What gives you any right to tell me otherwise?" There was no emotion behind the words. No emotion anywhere.

It was meant to be a rhetorical question, so I didn't expect him to respond at all, but he did.

"I... I... Because I..." His arms tightened around my waist.

I waited patiently for his reply. The longer he took, the longer I stayed alive. Wait, why did that matter?

He spun me around quickly, looked me in the eyes, and I rolled them back to where they were supposed to out of courtesy.

He shut his eyes tightly then, and gritted his teeth as his face grew red.

And then he opened his eyes wide and shouted at me, "It's because I love you, god dammit!"

_HUH?!_ _I-I don't want to repeat that!_

He sensed this, because just as I opened my mouth to speak, he crashed his lips into mine.

I had been kissed before, like I said, I'd had a couple girlfriends when I was living in LA, but I had never experienced anything like this.

His lips were soft, yet he moved them so roughly against mine. The contrast felt really nice, nothing like the way a girl would kiss. He had wrapped his arms around my waist again, although we were facing each other now. At some point I had snaked my arms around his neck, too. I played with his ponytail with my hand, and in doing so I accidentally knocked his hat off. Oh well. We might have stayed like that for a long time or for no time at all, I lost track. But we deepened and lessened the kiss as it suited us. At some point I started crying.

When we did finally separate, he looked deeply into my eyes, cupped my face, and scrubbed at my cheeks with his thumbs, wiping my tears away.

What an idiot. The wind was going to blow his hat away if he didn't get it off the ground.

So I picked it up for him, positioned it right on his head, and kissed him again. He didn't expect this at all, and it took him a while to respond, which I thought was cute, but he kissed me back, in the exact same way, but completely different. Almost overwhelmingly new, a barrage on my senses that had never happened to me before. And I loved it. I wanted more.

I wanted to stay, at least, for a little while longer.

We pulled away again and he asked me, "Are you okay, now?"

I smiled at him, and responded, "Yes." And my eyes were still facing the way they were supposed to. The first time I'd looked at someone without imitating them for a long, long time.

It felt great.

Finding love in a foreign country is awesome, indeed.

* * *

**I am more confused and surprised at how this turned out than you are, trust me.**

**SPENCER/SHADOW, ONLY ME.**


End file.
